AAS and IOP team up to enhance knowledge of the universe

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) and IOP Publishing (IOP) have created an electronic book publishing partnership as part of the AAS's mission to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe.

The program will combine IOP's ebook publishing with the expertise of the AAS community with the aim of fostering a deeper understanding of diverse topics in the astronomical sciences. These will include not only planetary, stellar, galactic, and cosmological phenomena and processes, but also instrumentation and techniques, computation and statistics, and other practical aspects of modern astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, and related fields.

The AAS and IOP have collaborated successfully for many years on the society’s peer-reviewed journals, The Astronomical Journal and The Astrophysical Journal, Letters, and Supplement Series. They have recently grown this co-operation by developing tools such as the Astronomy Image Explorer (www.astroexplorer.org), which simplifies and broadens information discovery for researchers.

Kevin Marvel, executive officer of the AAS, said: 'The AAS is perfectly positioned right now to undertake this exciting new effort. Our partnership with IOP on the publication of our journals, which play key roles in the field, has grown the range and volume of content we publish, secured their financial position, and expanded their impact and capabilities. We are looking forward to this new effort, which is central to our mission.'

Steven Hall, managing director of IOP, said: 'We are delighted to combine our experience in ebook publishing with the AAS's expertise and reputation in astronomy. This is an exciting new chapter in our relationship and we look forward to developing the world’s best book publishing program in astronomy, which will serve the mission of both of our organisations in supporting scientific discovery.'